Is it cold enough for you?

By my estimate, there are three different kinds of annoying people. There are the people who hum, people who consistently claim to have already liked a band before they became "cool," and people who complain about the weather.

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By Zoe Abel

DailyTidings.com

By Zoe Abel

Posted Jan. 21, 2013 at 2:00 AM

By Zoe Abel

Posted Jan. 21, 2013 at 2:00 AM

» Social News

By my estimate, there are three different kinds of annoying people. There are the people who hum, people who consistently claim to have already liked a band before they became "cool," and people who complain about the weather.

There are certainly more behaviors than this that I find annoying, but I think that those are just sub-categories of the previously listed behaviors.

I have never claimed to have liked a band before they became mainstream cool. Mostly this is because I don't think I've ever claimed to like any band, at any point in their career. I am so completely outside of the music loop that the loop looks like a dot in the distance from where I stand.

I admit that I do occasionally whistle, hum or sing along with the radio, especially when I'm driving. I think I have managed to limit this behavior to when I'm alone, or only with a close blood relative, though.

No, the annoying category that I fall into is being one of those people that complains about the weather. I consistently tell people that I hate being hot and I hate sweating. I do like to go on vacation to warm, tropical destinations (or I like to imagine that I am on vacation in warm tropical destinations), but I like something cool, dreary and rainy to come home to.

Now, it is definitely not hot, and sweating is nothing but a distant memory. Now I complain daily about the cold weather. I complain about my cold ears, my cold feet and stare in disbelief at my friends who claim to enjoy activities such as skiing. I have never been skiing in my life. The only part of skiing that sounds fun to me is sitting in the lodge drinking hot chocolate. Then I remember that I can make my own hot chocolate without having to chain up the tires on my car first, and the urge to "ski" quickly disappears.

It's true that I hate to sweat, but I also abhor scraping the ice off my windshield in the morning to get to work. Even worse is the fact that I work long days, days that go late enough into the evening that I usually have to scrape my windshield again before I can drive home.

I once told my mother that the only reason I would want to get married is to have someone to make coffee in the morning and scrape the ice off my car. My mother claims that husbands are good for other things, too, such as companionship and emotional support, but it's harder for me to imagine those things when I'm blasting the defrost on my car and scraping off my side-view mirrors.

I know it's annoying to complain about the weather, but I just can't stop myself. No matter what the weather conditions are, I always imagine that anything else would be better. What I need is a good side-by-side comparison. I need a day that starts out so cold that I have to scrape the ice off my windshield, and ends up so hot that I have to come face-to-face with my sworn enemy, sweat. Only then can I truly decide which is more abhorrent, the heat or the cold.

Until then, I simply will continue along in my category of annoyingness and complain about the weather to anyone who has the bad luck of crossing paths with me on a day that has any kind of weather. To balance things out, I promise to continue to avoid mentioning that I like this band before they got cool, and I will limit my humming to my alone time in the car.

Zoe Abel is sitting all alone, thinking terrible thoughts about the cold weather and humming along to the radio. You can contact her at dailyzoe@gmail.com.